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Town Official Suggests Plan To Put Police In the Schools

After 2 of 10 school districts in this Westchester town shut down in recent days because of Columbine-like threats, the town supervisor, Paul J. Feiner, today offered superintendents a cost-sharing plan that would put uniformed police officers into schools that wanted them.

The proposal, inspired by threats in Edgemont and Hastings-on-Hudson, met with mixed reactions from the school superintendents who convened in Town Hall here for a question-and-answer session with Mr. Feiner, Chief John Kapica of the Greenburgh Police Department and Timmy L. Weinberg, a member of the Town Council.

Mr. Feiner said before the meeting that he expected widespread resistance from superintendents, who are fearful of hurting the image of their upscale districts by acknowledging a risk that ''nobody wants to admit.'' His modest hope, the supervisor said, is to win over one or two administrators and let their districts be models for others.

The most vocal proponent of the plan was the superintendent of the Ardsley school system, Stanley Toll, who said it might give ''parents and kids an extra layer of comfort in these difficult times.'' Dr. Toll, who last year suspended several students who called themselves the Trench Coat Mafia and made e-mail threats to classmates, said that his school board and families he had sounded out were ''reasonably positive about the concept.''

By contrast, John D. Russell, the Hastings superintendent who evacuated three schools last week after a bomb threat, said that a regular police presence was ''not consistent with the values of our district'' and ''changes the tone and tenor of a school.'' Dr Russell said he would take Mr. Feiner's proposal to his school board but was not inclined to participate.

Dr. Russell noted that a police officer on the campus of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., was unable to stop the carnage there in 1999. Chief Kapica countered by saying that last month in El Cajon, Calif., the officer assigned to Granite High School subdued a student who had wounded five people and was bent on further destruction.

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But Chief Kapica and the two Greenburgh elected leaders made it clear that the main mission of officers at schools would be to prevent violence by acting as counselors and confidants to the students. ''We're not the Gestapo coming into your schools to click our heels, pat and frisk kids and look in their lockers,'' Chief Kapica said. ''This is meant to open lines of communication.''

Under the proposal, the salary and benefits for one or more additional police officers, members of local departments, would be shared by the Town of Greenburgh, the villages within it and the participating school districts, according to a complicated formula.

The total cost of the program will depend on how many districts participate, how many officers they want and the officers' wages. Each participating district would be eligible for a federal grant that could provide $125,000 over three years to offset expenses.

Mr. Feiner had originally considered using plainclothes officers, assuming that it would soften objections of suburban parents who are not accustomed to schools with metal detectors, locked toilets and armed guards. But the federal grant requires that so-called community resource officers be in uniform.

Most of the superintendents and police officials at today's meeting asked about financing, training and supervision of officers and the timetable for grant applications, but did not reveal their opinions of the plan. Dr. Russell was the only one to speak in opposition. Besides Ardsley, two districts indicated tentative support: Edgemont and Elmsford.